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The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth
World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
Secretariat.
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AS WRITTEN
Statement by UNESCO
Mr. Federico Mayor
Director-General
United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)
Madam Chairperson,
Distinguished delegates
Ladies and gentlemen,
WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT
and
WOMEN IN POWER
We must empower women to enable them to exercise power. Women in
power will promote the empowerment of women and thereby increase the number
of women in power. This is the dual commitment that can make this
Conference a turning point.
If the Conference does not focus on a restricted number of
essential gender issues, and if the Member States do not commit themselves
firmly to implement the relevant decisions, then words will once again fail
to be translated into deeds. And all the efforts and money invested in this
Conference will evaporate without producing the precious result of
enhancing women's role, improving their quality of life, and strengthening
world stability and security.
At the beginning of the Conference, Mrs Mongella spoke of moving
"beyond rhetoric". Let us therefore translate into practice, before the end
of the century, two main objectives that can profoundly change the present
situation and trends : women's empowerment and women in power.
We must empower women because today - even if the figures have
improved in recent years - some two-thirds of the 900 million illiterates
between 15 and 60 years of age are women; and over 60 % of the 130 million
out-of-school children are girls. Women and girls constitute a large
majority of the world's educationally excluded and unreached.
Education - lifelong education for all - is essential to allow all
women to participate. I like to repeat : "I participate, therefore I exist
as a citizen". If I do not participate, I do not exist as a citizen.
Education is empowerment, is liberation, is giving everybody the
capacity to decide for themselves. As the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San
Suu Kyi said in her statement to the NGO Forum: "I would like to
concentrate on peace, security, human rights and democracy (...),
particularly in the context of the participation of women in politics and
governance. (...) The education and empowerment of women throughout the
world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful
life for all". Empowering women through education is the key to addressing
the equality, development and peace agendas before this Conference.
Equality of opportunity, and the reduction of female poverty, will
only be achieved when women are able to play their full part in the
development process, which includes helping to shape it. Increased learning
and training opportunities, from basic through to higher education, are
crucial to the equal participation of women in socio-economic life and
decision-making. This is wholly consistent with the action that UNESCO has
been pursuing with UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank and UNFPA since the World
Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990. The
Jomtien process - given new impetus by the 1993 New Delhi Summit of Nine
High-Population Countries - places strong emphasis on the education of
girls and women. Ensuring that women are able to use acquired skills in
economically rewarding ways is another important aspect of empowerment.
Schemes such as that of the Grameen Bank open up new possibilities for the
development of the informal sector in poor rural communities. On behalf of
UNESCO, I shall be signing here in Beijing a memorandum of understanding
with the Grameen Bank, which will seek to link the provision of
life-oriented education with the Bank's group lending activities.
This is not a Conference of women but on women. I wish to stress
the principle of universality: two years ago, the Vienna Conference clearly
reaffirmed that women's rights are an integral and indivisible component of
Human Rights. Decisions that relate to the "em-powerment" and
"in-powerment" of women must be taken and put into practice without any
hint of concession.
70 % of those living in absolute poverty (some 1.3 billion
worldwide) are women. But only 6 % of government ministers are women, and
less than 10 % of parliamentarians are women. Ensuring equal access to all
forms of learning opportunities is crucial for women's empowerment and
access to decision-making. It is crucial because as Nobel Peace Prize
winner Rigoberta Menchu has so rightly - and so simply! - pointed out:
"It's very important to be an elector. But what really matters is to be
eligible."
It is time for action. It is time for a genuine mobilization of
society as a whole - not just "civil society". All the members of society -
including religious groups and the armed forces - must co-operate in this
peaceful transformation. Specific proposals in this context are:
(1) By the year 2000, the percentage of GNP devoted to education should
be at least 6 %. Lifelong learning facilities should be provided to the
excluded and unreached - particularly women and girls - in such a way that
gender parity at all levels of education is achieved by the year 2005.
(2) Appropriate legal measures should be adopted to ensure that all
decision-making bodies, from municipal to State level, should comprise at
least 30 % of women.
Both targets are feasible. The Prime Minister of India, Mr
Narasimha Rao, announced at the New Delhi Summit of the Nine
High-Population Countries, organized jointly with UNICEF and UNFPA, the
decision that his country was going to make a "leap" in its educational
investment from 3.6 % to 6 % of GNP. And some months ago, the Parliament
decided that the proportion of women at all levels of decision-making would
be at least 30 %.
This is good news! Good news for global population growth rates,
for poverty alleviation, for migration reduction. Good news for peace.
Let us listen to the immense unspoken wishes - the silence - of
hundreds of millions of women - illiterate women who are capable of
inspiring us. For we must always avoid the confusion between illiterate and
ignorant. In the industrialized world, we risk becoming permanent
spectators, without time to think, "screen-driven", passive. Wisdom - like
sharing and generosity - is more often found in the poorest countries.
There are no funds for peace-building - for building schools,
training teachers, forming judges and doctors. There are no funds for
nation-building in Rwanda and Burundi; for the restoration of libraries in
Sarajevo or Bucharest. Funds are available for destruction, for war, for
force. While billions of dollars are still being invested in armaments and
the refinement of weapons of destruction, millions of women and men are
living in subhuman conditions.
We need women in power in the interests of peace, of concern for
others, of openness, of tolerance. If it is true that education means being
able to say "I", tolerance is learning to say "you".
The media, the NGOs have an essential role to play in alerting and
mobilizing people everywhere, women and men, in the cause of peace,
development and equality. Above all, they have a responsibility for
ensuring a proper follow-up to Beijing by acting as the "memory" of what
has to be done.
All the major IGOs and NGOs have a particularly important role to
play. All together they can ensure that commitments will be honoured; that
all countries will learn from each other; that, without striving for
advantage, all will try to consolidate the only possible framework for the
achievement of our goals, the only context for justice, tolerance and
non-violent solutions: democracy.
In this connection, I wish to mention how actively concerned we are
with the place of women in the media and with the curbing of press and
screen violence. Some advertisements in "important" journals in many
"advanced" countries are shameful and a clear affront to woman's image
(sado-masochistic practices are announced as well as sex tours in
"under-developed" countries). This kind of publicity constitutes sexual
exploitation, and both the media and advertisers should refrain from such
offences to women.
We can change the world if all of us are ready to change ourselves.
If the decision-making process does not change, if education and justice
are not made the highest priorities, then many women and men will remain
excluded from the mainstream of welfare.
Women bring to the cause of peace among people and nations
distinctive experiences, competences and perspectives. Women contribute to
the forging of the new vision we need, on the eve of the third millennium,
to face new threats and move in the direction of a culture of peace.
Everyone should contribute - permanently and perseverantly - to
peace-building. Women subscribe less readily than men to the myth of the
efficacy of violence. They have a historic role to play in promoting what
the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ms Bertha von Suttner, called an
"active disgust for war". In this connection, I am submitting a Statement
on Women's Contribution to a Culture of Peace for the signature of women
Heads of State and Government, Nobel Prize laureates and heads of UN
organizations. I would seek the support of all those present at this
Conference for this affirmation of women's role in the dificult transition
from a culture of violence to a culture of peace.
Women empowered and in power to give new impetus to the fantastic
and unexpected "long march" towards democracy - that is our greatest hope
at the dawn of the next century. UNESCO has already envisaged a substantial
increase in activities related to women, a priority target since 1985. The
draft Medium-Term Strategy for 1996-2001 provides for mainstreaming a
gender perspective in all the Organization's fields of activity. UNESCO's
action is premised on the belief that effective equality of rights is an
essential aspect of democratic governance. Democracy can indeed be seen as
both a means and an end for our common cause. For it is ultimately only
through democratic dialogue and action that issues of gender equity can be
fairly addressed and equitably resolved. Which brings us back once again to
education, as the recognized foundation of democratic life.
Empowerment of women and women in power - these must be our targets
to make Beijing a turning point for the future of women, the future of
humanity. This would be the best tribute we could pay to China, the best
way to achieve a "great leap forward" through the release of the
self-confidence of all. This was the idea I expressed in a poem I addressed
to "Woman" - to all the women of the world, to the most prominent and the
most invisible, to all because all are equal in dignity. I would like to
conclude by reading in Spanish the first and the last sections of my poem.
with which I would like to conclude:
Mujer, Mujer,
traias una cancion tus ojos
nueva veian el mundo
en los labios. de otro modo.
Pero no te dimos Pero no quisimos
la palabra conocer el contenido
aunque eres y el calor
la voz de tu mirada.
de la mitad
De la tierra.
Mujer,
sin otro dueno
de cada uno
que si mismo,
iras
desde ahora
igual y libre,
companera
de un mismo sueno
ya para siempre
compartido.